Kafr’ Inan / Naher El Bared
Kafr’ Inan
Kafr’ Inan, a Palestinian village located in the Galilee, near the city of Safad, was occupied in 1949. The 418 village inhabitants were forceably expelled and most fled to the nearby town of Rami and to the Naher El Bared Refugee camp in Lebanon near Tripoli.
The village inhabitans of Kafr’Inan owned 5.800 km² of land, of which 65% was cultivated and 35% used as grazing land. The village’s built up area, located on the slope of the hill El Jubeil, represented only 0,4% of the large total village land.
Inhabitan’s livelihood consisted mainly of farming and fabrication of pottery. Kafr’ Inan used to share the fountain, school and mosque with the nearby village of Al-Farraddiyya.
The 5.800 Dunums of argricultural land, which belonged to the village, now is used by three small Israeli settlements, which are located on the surrounding hilltops. In the south a military base is overlooking the area.
Kafr’ Inan was intentionally destroyed by the Israeli troops with the exception of a granary and a water cistern. The site, which remained unbuilt, still contains large amounts of building rubble and is now used as grazing land.
Naher El Bared
The Palestinian refugee camp Naher El Bared is located 16km north of Triploli in Lebanon on the Mediterranean coast. It was established in 1949 to host Palestinian refugees from the region around the Huleh lake in the Galilee.
During the summer of 2007 it became the scene of a fierce battle between the Lebanese Armed Forces and a militant Islamist group called Fateh al-Islam, resulting in the utter destruction of Naher El Bared.
Around 40.000 refugees were evacuated and had to find shelter in other, already overcrowded, refugee camps.
Extensive surveys have been carried out by UNRWA and the Nahr El Bared Reconstruction Commission for Civil Action and Studies (NBRC) to document NBC’s lost assets. By involving the refugee community through a participatory approach, UNRWA and the NBRC have been able to map the residential locations of all families in NBC prior to the conflict and have prepared new urban plans, proposed infrastructure plans and draft designs for residential units for the Preliminary Master Plan for the Reconstruction of NBC. Nevertheless, to this day, the rubble which is rife with hidden mines, has not been removed.
